Chapter Thirteen

Adventures with jewel thieves or not, Sara’s instruction in domestic arts at the King farmhouse continued. While the other children did their own chores, Sara was left once again to prepare the supper. The art of cooking remained as mysterious and impenetrable to her as it had on previous occasions. When the children finally gathered around the table, Sara served up the results of her labors—small round objects that closely resembled lumps of coal. Felix, Cecily and Felicity all scowled in disappointment, for their work had made them ravenous. While a flash of lightning illuminated the room, Felix tried to take a bite from the mystery food.

“What’s this? Charcoal?” he groused, listening to the thing drop back on his plate with a clunk.

Part of the reason the food was so bad was that Sara’s mind had not been on cooking at all, but on Gus’s dilemma. She scarcely heard Felix.

“If only we knew the plan ...” she agonized, the pot and serving spoon forgotten in her hands. There was no telling what sort of trouble Gus might get himself into trying to cope with Rutherford by himself.

Felicity, too, had been so wrapped up in Gus’s problems that she didn’t have a comment to spare for the culinary disaster before her.

“We know enough, I think,” she put in bleakly.

She and Sara exchanged looks. Without saying a word, they both knew they couldn’t leave Gus out there on his own with that terrible man.

“We’ll take Digger,” Felicity said, rising to her feet.

“Yes. He hates that detective.”

Sara readily abandoned the pot on the back of the stove while Felicity turned to her younger sister.

“Cecily ...”

“I know ... stay here,” Cecily sighed. Whatever exciting adventures the others were going on, she was never allowed to join.

“If we’re not back by midnight,” Sara instructed, “you go and get help. Come on, Felix! Hurry!”

“I haven’t finished eating my ...” Felix looked at the charred lump and thought the better of wolfing down such a dinner. “All right, let’s go.”

As fast as they could, the three children pulled on their coats and raced to the cemetery. Once there, they cautiously scanned the scene under cover of the bushes. The only person they could see was Gus himself, pacing back and forth by the light of a lantern, which he had hung from the branch of a tree.

The lantern, cast a very puny glow in the blackness all around, for no scrap of moonlight could make its way from behind the dense storm clouds. The branches creaked and groaned in the erratic gusts of wind. An owl hooted ominously. Lightning threw an eerie light onto the gravestones. In such a setting, it was no wonder that Gus appeared to be shivering.

“He. looks cold,” Felicity murmured, worried that Gus might catch pneumonia in that inadequate jacket of his. The children hid themselves behind some tombstones in order to keep watch. This time, Felix was holding Digger tightly so that the eager dog would not give them away. All of them went rigid when a flare of lightning suddenly revealed the silhouette of Rutherford not a dozen yards away.

“Have you got what I want, boy?” Rutherford called out to Gus.

Gus spun around at the sound of the hated voice. “Where’s Miss Stone?” he demanded, getting straight to his main concern. He was determined Rutherford should keep his part of the bargain.

“I’m all right, Gus,” came Amanda’s voice over the gusting wind. It was so dark, nobody could see her.

“Throw the gems this way, boy,” Rutherford ordered.

“Not until I see Miss Stone.”

Rutherford dragged Amanda, wrists bound, into view and pushed her ahead of him until the lantern light illuminated her cloak.

“Here she is,” Rutherford growled impatiently. “Where’s my property?”

“Miss Stone, are you all right?” Gus asked, unable to take his distressed gaze from her captive state. Amanda ran quickly to Gus and placed her bound arms around his neck as though he had saved her from certain death. Her seduction had never been more powerful.

“Oh, do as he says, Gus,” she pleaded fetchingly. “He’s a monster!”

As if to prove her words, Rutherford loomed up behind her.

“Throw the gems here, boy, or by God I’ll bash you against these stones!”

Gus hesitated a long moment before finally pulling the little cloth bag from his jacket and tossing it over to Rutherford. Rutherford caught it eagerly, jerked open the neck and poured the contents into his palm. As best he could, he examined them by the wind-buffeted lantern light.

“Well, Robert?” Amanda inquired, with much more pleasantness towards her captor than might have been expected from a woman in her position.

All the children held their breaths, for the bag contained nothing but Felicity’s rhinestones. If Rutherford noticed the deception there was no telling what he might do.

The rhinestones did glitter convincingly. Rutherford hesitated, then poured his shining handful triumphantly back into the bag. The weak lantern light had done its job. seemed torn between seriously trying to save Gus and being pleased with Rutherford’s passion.

Rutherford took a large, angry step towards Gus, raising his stick. “By God, I’m sick and tired of you. I’m going to thrash your ...“

Before the cane could lash down on Gus, a chestnut zinged out of the darkness, striking Rutherford a stinging blow on the face. Another followed, then another, whacking Rutherford hard in every part of his anatomy. Felix, Felicity and Sara leapt out of their hiding place, throwing the missiles with all their might.

In the emergency, all they could find to throw were chestnuts and snowballs, but they made the most of them, especially since the chestnuts were stifi inside their thick, spiky green jackets. Digger, also released, sprang, barking furiously, at the man he detested so much. Despite these assaults, Rutherford kept on after Gus, meaning to slash him if he could.

The last step Rutherford took brought him up short, for he suddenly found himself teetering on the edge of a deep, dark, completely unsuspected pit. As he tried to scramble back, one of Felix’s deadly-true missiles struck him with a great thud right between the eyes. Unable to stop himself, Rutherford toppled, face forward, straight into the hole. The second Rutherford struck the bottom, Gus let go of Amanda and rushed over to the pit to look in. Rutherford lay sprawled, apparently knocked out cold. And, for good measure, he was also tangled up in the fishnet that had dropped around him. He had lost the jewel bag as he fell. Rhinestones winked up, scattered every which way in the mud.

Amanda’s mouth popped open with the realization that she had just been used as bait to lure Rutherford to the hole. In the barest nick of time she prevented herself from screeching in protest.

Sara and her cousins rushed up a moment later. When Sara saw the trap Gus had laid, she recognized it immediately.

“Just like the one Sir Basil used to catch evil Lord Doom in ‘Death Rides by Night’!” she cried out in admiration.

“Hey,” put in Felix, “I told Gus about that!” And here he’d been thinking that Gus hadn’t been listening at all back there in the Markdale Jail.

Gus grinned. “Took me all afternoon to dig that hole and get the muck out. My back’s near broke.”

Amanda was a woman accustomed to thinking on her feet. She hurried to Gus’s side and gazed up at him in hero worship.

“I owe you a great debt, once again, Gus. He took me captive and he told me he was going to kill you! I couldn’t bear the thought of that so—”

“Was he holding you captive when you helped him tear apart my home today?” Gus interrupted, strangely unmoved by Amanda’s appealing eyes.

Missing Gus’s tone, Amanda pressed a dainty hand to her bosom. “Oh, he took me there by force!” she quavered.

“And who was it who told him about the Captain’s secret hiding place?”

Amanda saw that her hold over Gus was definitely slipping. Determined to overwhelm him with an all-out barrage of her charms, she reached up and stroked Gus’s cheek. Then she brought her soft lips close to his and gazed seductively into his eyes. Gus bent closer—and gave Amanda a little tip backward. With a screech, she fell smack into the pit with Rutherford. Felicity, Sara and Felix giggled with delight.

“I wasn’t about to believe her again,” Gus admitted. “That’d make me stupid.”

Felicity and Gus smiled openly at each other, friendship restored.

“I guess I owe you all an apology,” Gus continued. “Especially you, Felicity. You knew from the beginning.”

Felicity’s head lifted proudly. “Everyone knows I’m a shrewd judge of character, Gus. I was telling Sara that, despite your lack of prospects, your inner strength would see you through, didn’t I, Sara?”

“Uh ... yes, Felicity.” Sara just stopped herself from blurting out that Felicity had said no such thing.

“And I want you all to know I appreciate it,” Gus said. “I’ll never again lose sight of my true friends just because of a pretty face.”

Amanda, thanks to landing squarely on top of Rutherford, hadn’t been harmed in the least. As soon as she hit bottom, she sprang up again, ignoring Rutherford completely in favor of the scattered gems. As fast as she could she began scooping them up from the corners of the pit where they had rolled. In doing so, she got a closer look at them.

“Hey,” came her outraged voice as Rutherford stirred groggily, “these aren’t the real gems. Where are they, you bloody fool?”

She hadn’t been a successful jewel thief for years without becoming an expert on quality. Even in the feeble gleams of lantern light that penetrated the hole, she knew Rutherford had been tricked.

“Safe in the Markdale constable’s safe,” Felix gloated before he could think about what he was so foolishly giving away.”

Rutherford had regained consciousness and Amanda’s words seemed to have a totally electric effect upon him. Tearing the fishnet from himself as though it were mere cobwebs, he suddenly sprang to his feet inside the pit. He was fuming mad and looked bent on murder.

“Gus! Look out!” Felix yelled as the dark apparition rose up from the dark hole. With a bare split second to spare, Felix grabbed at Gus, pulling him just short of Rutherford’s enraged grasp.

Gus had miscalculated Rutherford’s size and failed to dig the pit deep enough. Now, before Gus’s horrified eyes, Rutherford clambered out of it, smeared with mud and frightening enough to be Lord Doom himself. The children backed away, barely able to move, as Rutherford heaved himself to his feet and lunged towards them. Lightning illuminated the contorted fury of his face.

“Robert!” shrieked Amanda from the depths of the pit. “Robert! Robert!”

Her voice broke the spell of terror, enabling all the young people, including Gus, to regain full use of their legs. Leaping tombstones and crashing through brush, they fled as fast as their fright would carry them, Gus towing Felicity along by the arm. Rutherford made to pursue them and had actually started off when Amanda called out again.

“Robert—aren’t you forgetting something?”

Rutherford paused, sneering back towards the hole where Amanda was so neatly captured.

“Give me one good reason why I should bother with you,” he insisted angrily.

Even trapped in a muddy pit in a cemetery, Amanda’s wits did not desert her. “The Markdale constable’s safe. Should be an easy job—for the two of us.”

Rutherford paused a moment longer, then reached down and hauled Amanda out of the hole. She clung to him for a moment, turning on him the same alluring gaze she had used on Gus, then broke away. With the air of a man who should know better but can’t help himself, Rutherford started to follow her. A moment later, the two flitted off out of sight together.